Dynafish – Algarve web designershttps://www.dynafish.net
Algarve websites and Algarve web designThu, 08 Mar 2018 14:20:59 +0000en-GBhourly1105203017Simple website questionnairehttps://www.dynafish.net/simple-website-questionnaire/
Fri, 21 Jul 2017 11:22:03 +0000https://www.dynafish.net/?p=2094If you want to ask Dynafish to build you a website, what used to happen is that you emailed us or filled in our contact form, then we emailed you back and/or phoned you up and asked lots of questions, before we could give you a quote. We’ve now simplified the process with the introduction […]

]]>If you want to ask Dynafish to build you a website, what used to happen is that you emailed us or filled in our contact form, then we emailed you back and/or phoned you up and asked lots of questions, before we could give you a quote.

We’ve now simplified the process with the introduction of our Website Questionnaire. This form will take just a few minutes to complete, and your answers will hopefully give us enough information about your requirements to be able to send you a ballpark quotation.

As part of our efforts to provide fast, accurate support, to help keep our clients updated with the status of our systems, we have implemented a system status page.

This page is located at http://dynafish.statusdashboard.com/ and here you will be able to find full details of any active issues with our systems (servers, web sites and email) and also any scheduled maintenance.

]]>1955Girding up your loinshttps://www.dynafish.net/girding-up-your-loins/
Fri, 20 Jan 2017 16:23:40 +0000https://www.dynafish.net/?p=1892“Gird your loins”. It’s a delightful expression, albeit arcane, and one that I’ve never used in print before – which lead me to do some research on its origin, that took me away from the main thrust of this post – gosh it’s so easy to drift off sideways. Anyway, here’s the answer, courtesy of The […]

]]>“Gird your loins”. It’s a delightful expression, albeit arcane, and one that I’ve never used in print before – which lead me to do some research on its origin, that took me away from the main thrust of this post – gosh it’s so easy to drift off sideways. Anyway, here’s the answer, courtesy of The Art of Manliness (moving sideways again, a delightful piece of retro design that probably doesn’t feature in the list of top 100 feminist sites):

According to a report on the use of encryption and anonymity in digital communication to the UN Human Rights Council, governments should promote the use of strong encryption and protect anonymous expression online. In an era of unprecedentedly broad and intrusive government surveillance, these tools often offer the only safe way for people in repressive environments to express themselves freely.

Besides state-sponsored surveillance, there’s also been a huge growth in commercial data grabbing and profiling, with your web browsing habits being closely scrutinised right, left and centre, and being sold to the highest bidders. The criminals aren’t missing out either – identity theft and online fraud continue to rise at an alarming rate, and much of this is aided and abetted by criminals snooping on public WiFi hotspots (if you use public wifi, snooping on you is way easier than you think).

So it’s definitely time to gird up your loins, and protect your private parts by wrapping them up with in shielding material. Here’s a few top tips for keeping your privates out of public view:

Use a VPN

Millions of people don’t just like free Wi-Fi—they plan their lives around it. A study from last year found that 49 percent of business travellers say that they consider free Wi-Fi a “deciding” factor when picking out a place to stay.

When they connect from their hotel room or at an airport or in a coffee shop via laptop, phone or tablet, they’re likely emailing, shopping and banking as if they’re at home or in their office. It doesn’t feel any different to get online through Wi-Fi than it does through a secure network so why would you behave any differently?

Without a VPN (or Virtual Private Network), it’s trivial for anyone else using the same WiFi to see big parts of your traffic, A VPN encrypts your data, even on public WiFi, creating a private tunnel that makes your personal information impossible to intercept. Think of it as drawing your curtains at home when you don’t want people outside looking into your house.

With a good VPN, you get more than protection for your WiFi or mobile connection. Many VPNs also remove tracking cookies and other potential breaches of privacy. The added benefit of this is that browsing becomes much faster – it can often be faster with a VPN than without.

So as well as up-to-date online security, you should run a VPN, especially if you do your business on the run. With a VPN, wherever you connect, a VPN protects all your PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets to prevent businesses, cybercriminals or authoritative organisations from tracking you online and using your personal information. You can also access virtual locations to use services available only available in certain regions – for instance, BBC iPlayer.

Nowadays VPNs are ridiculously easy to set up, and can run on all your devices with you hardly knowing they’re there. There’s a whole host of companies supplying VPN services, and which one you choose comes down to a number of factors, including (but not restricted) to what you do online and how much you want to pay. Before jumping in with a VPN, do your research and find the service that suits your needs best.

Use a secure instant messenger

The (free) Signal messenger is the gold standard for secure instant messengers. It’s not perfect, but there’s no known security flaws. Built by Open Whisper Systems and recommended by Edward Snowden, it’s fully open source. It’s available for iOS and Android, and seamlessly combines end-to-end encrypted text and voice for Signal to Signal communications with plain vanilla unencrypted SMS for non-Signal users, and so can be your one-stop SMS and IM client.

Block website trackers

Nearly every time you visit a web page, there will be one or more trackers on the site that note your visit and record what details they can about you. This information is then stored to recognise you on future visits, and also consolidated and sold on the marketing companies. Often the same tracker is used on many different web sites, and you can be recognised as you move around the web (Google Analytics is a prime culprit here – it’s estimated that 8 out of 10 sites have it installed).

There’s a growing number of browser add-ons available to deal with this. Some block one or more specific trackers, others are sophisticated enough to block traffic that looks like it’s a tracker. Here’s some of the best – all free:

Keep updated

Keep all your operating systems and apps up to date, to minimise security holes.

Keep an eye on new developments in the privacy and security field. The rather marvellous Electronic Frontier Foundation publish an up-to-date online manual of best practices – Surveillance Self Defence.

So go forth and gird up your loins, and you’ll be ready to rock – just like this happy crew are:

]]>1892WhatsApp revisitedhttps://www.dynafish.net/whatsapp-revisited/
Mon, 24 Oct 2016 15:06:53 +0000https://www.dynafish.net/?p=1863The very excellent Electronic Frontier Foundation have recently published an article expressing their security concerns about WhatsApp. In short, these are: Unencrypted backups WhatsApp prompts you to choose how often to backup your data to the cloud. These backups are unencrypted and not password protected. The advice is to never back up your messages to the cloud, […]

]]>The very excellent Electronic Frontier Foundation have recently published an article expressing their security concerns about WhatsApp. In short, these are:

Unencrypted backups

WhatsApp prompts you to choose how often to backup your data to the cloud. These backups are unencrypted and not password protected. The advice is to never back up your messages to the cloud, since that would deliver unencrypted copies of your message log to the cloud provider.

Key change notifications

Key verification is critical to prevent a Man in the Middle attack, in which a third party pretends to be a contact you know. If your contact’s key changes suddenly, this could be an indication that you are being man-in-the-middled (though typically it’s just because your contact has bought a new phone and re-installed the app).

If the encryption key of a contact changes, this fact is hidden away by default. To turn notifications on, go to Account/Security/Security Notifications and switch it on.

Web app

WhatsApp provides an HTTPS-secured web interface for users to send and receive messages. This can easily be modified to serve a malicious version of the application which is capable of delivering all your messages to a third party. A better, more secure option would be to provide desktop clients in the form of extensions rather than a web interface.

Facebook data sharing

WhatsApp’s recent privacy policy update announced plans to share data with WhatsApp’s parent company Facebook, signalling a concerning shift in WhatsApp’s attitude toward user privacy. As covered in our earlier post, while existing WhatsApp users were given 30 days to opt out of this change in their Facebook user experience, they cannot opt out of the data sharing itself. This gives Facebook an alarmingly enhanced view of users’ online communications activities, affiliations, and habits.

With the introduction of end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp has became the messaging app of choice for privacy-conscious users. There were some warning bells sounded when FaceBook acquired WhatsApp back in 2014, and now these bells are ringing louder than ever.

Julian Assange of Wikileaks and Ecuadorian embassy fame once labelled Facebook as “…the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented“, and with the launch of the new privacy (sic) policy for stablemate WhatsApp, the onward march of Facebook’s data grab continues, as the messaging app will now, by default, share some data with Facebook.

How to opt out

You can choose not to share your account information with Facebook for targeting purposes. There are two ways to do this:

1. On WhatsApp, don’t click Agree when it asks you to confirm you are happy with the change of terms. Instead, click to read more. You should then see a check box or control button at the bottom of the screen which says “Share my WhatsApp account information with Facebook to improve my Facebook ads and product experiences…”. Uncheck this.

2. If you have already agreed to the updated terms, you can go to to Settings > Account > Share my account info in the app. Then uncheck the box or toggle the control. But be quick: WhatsApp says you only have until 25th September to make this choice after agreeing to the new terms.

However, the company notes that data will still be shared “for other purposes such as improving infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities.”

For those of you who are thinking to opt out of the data-sharing entirely: sorry, but there’s no possible way to opt totally out – except to stop using WhatsApp. Instead, consider using another secure apps, like Signal from the totally wonderful Open Whisper Systems.

See here for an excellent article by security specialists Sophos covering this issue in depth.

]]>1840Just like London buseshttps://www.dynafish.net/just-like-london-buses/
Tue, 02 Feb 2016 15:08:40 +0000https://www.dynafish.net/?p=1729How shiny are they? The dear old Routemaster… the new ones never quite cut it for me to be honest… It’s been a busy start to the New Year. Just like London buses, we’ve site after site arriving, pretty much at the same time. From flowers to films and rentals to rubbish, we’ve had a whole […]

How shiny are they? The dear old Routemaster… the new ones never quite cut it for me to be honest…

It’s been a busy start to the New Year. Just like London buses, we’ve site after site arriving, pretty much at the same time. From flowers to films and rentals to rubbish, we’ve had a whole variety of fascinating and very different subjects to work with.

First, a brand new property management and villa rentals site for Vilalgarve. In English and Portuguese, this site is powered by our property systems – dynProp (for real estate and rentals) and dynRes, the integrated reservations management module. You can see the site at http://www.vilalgarve.net/.

Hot on its heels comes the new site for KG Villas. Once again running on dynProp, this site handles both real estate and rentals, in English, Portuguese and German, and can be found at http://www.kgvillas-algarve.com/.

WasteAid International is a network of independent charities, set up by waste management professionals to deliver practical and low-cost waste services for disadvantaged communities. You can see their site at http://wasteaid.org/.

WasteAid UK is a new charity created to make an impact on the global waste emergency. They partner with local organisations to improve the health, environment and livelihoods of people without waste services. They are currently working with partners in The Gambia and Senegal, training people in recycling technologies so they can improve their livelihoods, health and local economy. Check them out at http://wasteaid.org.uk/.

Based in Almancil and Praia de Luz in the Algarve, Projection Dreams are “…an ensemble of experts able to exceed the most accurate Cinema or Audio Visual Experience you have ever seen or heard”. We’ve just revamped their site at http://projectiondreams.com/.

Finally, we’ve just finished an update for one of our longest-standing clients, Raimunda Jensen of Ambient Flores. Raimunda is based at the Sheraton Hotel in Albufeira, and produces stunning floral arrangements for weddings and banquets. You can see the pick of the bunch at http://ambient-flores.net/.

]]>1729A solar power website, built with solar powerhttps://www.dynafish.net/solar-power-website-built-with-solar-power/
Fri, 22 May 2015 15:28:31 +0000https://www.dynafish.net/?p=1633We’ve just completed a website for our local solar electrician – please have a look at http://www.solalgarve.com. Although on the surface it’s a very simple site, developing it was a real exercise in analysis and design. We had to build a working structure to handle the information that we had, massage the content into the required items, and […]

Although on the surface it’s a very simple site, developing it was a real exercise in analysis and design. We had to build a working structure to handle the information that we had, massage the content into the required items, and then present it in such a way that visitors could easily find what they wanted without wading through layers of hierarchy.

The cherry on the cake is that (as with all our work) the site was built using 100% solar power – with a system built, maintained and upgraded by Solalgarve, that has been running happily here for years. For some reason that gives me a warm, satisfied feeling

]]>1633Property bookings and reservationshttps://www.dynafish.net/property-bookings-and-reservations/
Thu, 07 May 2015 11:47:58 +0000https://www.dynafish.net/?p=1624We are about to release the first version of dynRes, our property bookings and reservations module. This new module will integrate with our multi-lingual DYN CMS and dynProp real estate and rentals module, and provide rental agents with full control and reporting of bookings. If you’d like to know more, please contact us.

]]>1624Leap Motionhttps://www.dynafish.net/leap-motion/
Wed, 06 May 2015 12:05:57 +0000https://www.dynafish.net/?p=1617Remember the bit in Minority Report where Tom Cruise moves things around on a screen by hand movements? Well the technology is here, and without the gloves – brought to you by Leap Motion, and costing just €89.99. Watch the video below, and check out their amazing product at https://www.leapmotion.com/

Remember the bit in Minority Report where Tom Cruise moves things around on a screen by hand movements? Well the technology is here, and without the gloves – brought to you by Leap Motion, and costing just €89.99.

]]>1617WIRED’s security specialhttps://www.dynafish.net/wireds-security-special/
Fri, 03 Apr 2015 15:31:30 +0000https://www.dynafish.net/?p=1593In case you don’t know it, Wired is probably the best tech magazine around. They have just put together a security special, an accessible guide to encryption tools already on the market. In a world where cybercrime is transferring wealth on an unprecedented scale, it’s your responsibility to communicate securely. The article covers: How encryption protects our […]

]]>In case you don’t know it, Wired is probably the best tech magazine around. They have just put together a security special, an accessible guide to encryption tools already on the market. In a world where cybercrime is transferring wealth on an unprecedented scale, it’s your responsibility to communicate securely.